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Neck of Veal, Stewed

A stew of neck of veal cooked with lemon, parsley, bacon, tomatoes, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Neck of Veal, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the neck of veal and saw the bones across to detach the rib bones.

  2. Melt the butter or dripping in a stewpan and lightly fry the meat on both sides.

  3. Add the lemon rind, parsley, and a good seasoning of pepper, cover, and cook gently for 2 to 2.5 hours, basting frequently.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Fry or grill the bacon and cut it into dice.

  2. Bake or grill the tomatoes until tender but not too soft.

  3. Remove the meat from the stewpan, brush it lightly with meat glaze, and keep it warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with a little cold stock.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the boiling stock in a stewpan.

  3. Stir and boil for about 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the stock and add the fat from cooking the meat, lemon juice, and cream if using.

  5. Season to taste.

  6. Bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauceboat.

  2. Garnish the dish with alternating bunches of bacon and tomatoes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Neck of veal
Slow cooking in liquid turns the tough connective tissue tender and rich.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the meaty flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat for frying the meat and enriches the finished sauce.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and crisp contrast to the garnish.

The step that matters

Cooking the veal gently. Cooking covered at a gentle simmer over a long time breaks down collagen in the tough neck so the meat becomes tender. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and dries the meat.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, parsley, lemon, pepper, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, parsley, lemon, pepper, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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